Manage Microsoft Teams features in your Office 365 organization

03/12/2018

8 minutes to read

Contributors

Applies to:

Microsoft Teams

In this article

Important

The new Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center is coming soon! Starting in March 2018, we're gradually migrating settings to it from both the current Skype for Business admin center and the Microsoft Teams experience in the Office 365 admin center. If a setting has been migrated, you'll see a notification and then be directed to the setting's location in the new Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center.

Teams has multiple settings that can be turned on or turned off at the Office 365 tenant level. With Teams enabled, any user that is also enabled for Teams will inherit the settings from the tenant level.

Below is the list of features an Office 365 administrator can turn on or turn off in Teams.

Unless otherwise noted, the default value for an option is On.

Note

To manage admin settings for Teams, go to the Office 365 admin center and open Settings > Services & add-ins, then choose Microsoft Teams. If you're signed in as an Office 365 admin, this link should take you there:

An Office 365 admin can turn off Microsoft Teams at any time in the Office 365 admin center. Be aware that users with active Microsoft Teams licenses will continue to see the Teams app tile even if you turn off Teams. For details about how to remove licenses from users, see Manage user access to Microsoft Teams. After Teams is disabled, access from the Teams client is blocked, but data available through other clients and services is still available, such as files via SharePoint and OneDrive. All data remains in place unless the teams are explicitly deleted.

Office 365 tenant-wide settings

In Tenant-wide settings, you can turn on or turn off options in General, Email integration, Apps, and Custom cloud storage.

General

The General section lets you configure the following settings for your organization:

Show organizational chart in personal profile: When this setting is turned on, it shows the organizational chart icon in the user’s contact card, and when clicked, it displays the detailed organizational chart.

Use Skype for Business for recipients who don’t have Teams: When this setting is turned on, Teams conversations automatically show up in Skype for Business for users that aren't enabled for Teams.

Allow T-bot proactive help messages: When this setting is turned on, T-bot will initiate a private chat session with users to help them use Teams.

Email integration

Turn on this feature so users can send email to a channel in Teams, using the channel email address. Users can do this for any channel belonging to a team they own. Users can also send emails to any channel in a team that has adding connectors enabled for team members. And, even if a user doesn’t have permission to create a channel email address, if someone who does have permission creates that address, the user can access it from the More options menu for that channel.

Configure the following Email integration settings for your organization:

Allow users to send emails to channels: When turned on, mail hooks are enabled, and users can post messages to a channel by sending an email to the email address of Teams channel.

To find the email address for a channel, click the More options menu for the channel and then select Get email address.

Restricted Senders List: Senders domains can be further restricted to ensure that only allowed SMTP domains can send emails to the Teams channels.

Apps

Apps are tabs, connectors, bots, or any combination of these three, provided by a third-party service. There are Teams admin policies that can be configured in the Office 365 admin center to control which external third-party apps are allowed. These policies let you specify which apps are allowed and disallowed, new external App behavior, and whether side-loading apps is allowed.

Under Apps, you can configure the following settings for your organization:

Allow external apps in Microsoft Teams: When this switch is turned on, users can add tabs and bots that are available to the Office 365 tenant.

Enable new external apps by default: When this switch is turned on, users can activate new apps as soon as they're added to the Teams app catalog. Turn off this switch if you want to control new apps. Of course, if you turn it off, you have to remember to review new apps periodically so your organization doesn't miss out on cool new apps.

Allow sideloading of external apps: When this switch is turned on, users can install and enable custom bots and tabs.

Custom cloud storage

Cloud storage options in Teams currently include Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and ShareFile. Users can upload and share files from cloud storage services in Teams channels and chats. Turn on the switch for the cloud storage providers that your organization wants to use.

Settings by user/license type

When you set up Microsoft Teams for your organization initially, you used the the Settings by user/license type drop-down menu to select a license type and then turned Teams on for all users of that license type.

Note

Tenant-level control of the on/off status for Teams is temporary and will be removed by May 2018. At that time, access to Teams will be controlled via user-level licensing only. To learn more, see Manage user access to Microsoft Teams.

Some examples of user/license types are Business & Enterprise and Guest. (If you have an Education SKU license, Education - Faculty and Staff or Education - Student are available.)

You can you have multiple license types within your organization, for example, both Business & Enterprise and Guest. Microsoft Teams can only differentiate users based on the licenses you've assigned them. You can turn on or turn off options for these users in Teams and channels, Calls and meetings, and Messaging. If you use only one license type, consider the settings here as tenant-wide settings.

Teams and channels

A team is designed to bring together a group of people who work closely to get things done. Teams can be dynamic for project-based work (for example, launching a product or creating a digital war room). Or, teams can be ongoing, to reflect the internal structure of your organization.

The maximum number of teams that an Office 365 tenant can have is currently 500,000. A global admin can create an unlimited number of teams. A user can create 250 teams. A team owner can add 2500 members to a team.

As an admin, you can manage team owners and members by using the Groups dashboard in the Office 365 admin center. To learn more, click Use the Groups dashboard in the Office 365 admin center to manage teams under Teams and channels.

You can't create teams from the Groups dashboard. Teams must be created by using the Teams desktop client or web app.

By default, every user can create a team or group. Choose Teams on the left side in the Teams client (desktop client or web app), then choose Create and join team at the bottom of the client, below the team list.

Channels are subcategories of teams. Anyone on the team can add a channel and participate in the conversations in a channel. You might create a channel for an activity or for a department. Conversations, files, and wikis are specific to each channel, but all members of the team can see them.

Calls and meetings

Configure the following Calls and meetings settings for your organization:

The maximum number of people in a meeting is 80. There can be 20 members in a private chat, including the user who created the chat.

Allow scheduling for private meetings: When turned on, users can schedule private meetings that are not listed in any channel.

Allow ad-hoc channel meetup: When turned on, users can quickly start a meeting for a channel that has been created for an immediate or specific purpose.

Allow scheduling for channel meetings: When turned on, users can schedule a meeting for a channel that all channel members can easily join with a single click.

Allow videos in meetings: Specifies whether the use of video is allowed in meetings.